The subject invention is directed toward the art of depositing or dispensing apparatus and, more particularly, to an apparatus for applying frosting or icing to the sides of cylindrical cakes.
Automation of cake production has become a matter of substantial interest in recent years. Suitable machines and devices are avilable for automatically performing most of the steps required in the production of cakes. For example, apparatus for filling pans, transferring through ovens, depanning, layering, and stacking have been developed which function satisfactorily. The major problem in achieving substantially full automation has been the inability to design an apparatus which will satisfactorily apply the icing or frosting. This problem has been particularly acute with respect to the vertical sides of cylindrical layer cakes and the like.
The typical prior approach to the solution of this problem has been to attempt to use blades or spatula-like members mechanically driven to duplicate the manual motions used in applying icing. These attempts have been uniformly unsuccessful for different reasons.
It has also been proposed to apply the icing through an air spraying operation. This has proven to be unsatisfactory because of the difficulty of controlling the spray. Additionally, the appearance of the finished cake has generally been unappealing. Moreover, the properties of the icing have often been distrubed by the aeration and "working" which result from spraying (e.g., the shortening sometimes separated from the sugar).